


Between Fire and Ice

by Wojelah



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 10:45:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12886218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wojelah/pseuds/Wojelah
Summary: The first time, there is fire.  He doesn't tell her that it ends in ice.





	Between Fire and Ice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [navaan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/gifts).



> Title from Arthur C. Clarke, Expedition to Earth: "Those wanderers must have looked on Earth, circling safely in the narrow zone between fire and ice, and must have guessed that it was the favourite of the Sun's children."

The first time, there is fire. Jack supposes it’s appropriate, given the burn marks on his skin that don't fade, no matter how often he revives. He knows the Year That Never Was has left smoke in Martha's hair, grit in her skin and under her fingers she feels will never wash clean. Blood on her hands she will never unsee. 

He knows because she tells him, arms wrapped around herself, fingers biting in so hard they’re pale with pressure. She tells him as they watch a pyre burn brighter and higher, as they both watch the Doctor walk away. As they both fight themselves, understanding why he grieves. They don't want to. The truth of the matter is, Jack thinks, and it’s a sharp, bitter, metallic knowledge -- the truth of the matter is, they got into this mess in the first place because they’re the kind of people who understand even when they don't want to. 

Jack hadn't wanted to be that kind of person. He'd invested a great deal in pretending he wasn't. And then he'd met a big-eared man and a bright-eyed girl and ended up dead and alive and abandoned at what he'd thought, at the time, was the back end of the universe. And then the same man -- unmistakeably the same, despite the smaller ears, the natty suit, and the longer coat -- had come back and Jack had learned, at length, about both the end of the universe and the nature of endurance.

Jack understands it, objectively, just fine. That's the hell of it. And the look on Martha's face says she does too. Understanding isn't the problem. It’s the sheer metaphysical impossibility of reaching for distance at the end of everything, having to reach past rage, being _asked_ to do that, because what else can you do while watching the Doctor mourn the man who'd brought it all down on them, when you can't hate the Doctor for his sorrow. 

Jack is learning to deal in impossibilities and in emotions he doesn't want to describe.

What surprises him is how much he wishes Martha Jones didn't have to.

What surprises him is how she looks at him when he reaches over and takes her hands, smoothing his palms over the indentations in the leather of her sleeves. 

What surprises him is the gentleness in her, after everything, when she strokes a finger over his cheekbone and leans in to kiss him. 

He isn't surprised at all, later, when she tells him she plans to leave. She has her fingers over his heart and in his hair. He traces the tears along her temples, and kisses her quietly, because he doesn’t know how else to tell her just how much he understands.

He has Torchwood to go home to. He has a niche waiting. She’s starting from scratch.

\---

There isn't a second time.

\---

There’s an almost, when she comes to Cardiff. He'd heard the restlessness in her voice over the phone, when he'd asked. He's startled by it when she finally arrives. 

The Doctor changes people. Jack knows this better than most. He’s still learning to live, and live, and live with what that means. 

Martha Jones might not ever have been a perfect fit in the workaday world. But she'd managed, until the Doctor. She'd managed, and she'd been content.

Jack Harkness, by any name, has never understood contentment. He's envied it. He's sufficiently aware to know it's been stolen from her, and she'll never get it back. She's restive and caged, a shade too bright and a tiny bit brittle. He's intimately familiar with the condition. Unlike Jack Harkness, however, she's trying to use it to save the world, not steal it.

He knows she would call it a fair trade.

He knows the Doctor is still a thief.

He knows the Doctor would call himself far worse, and that’s just part of the whole complicated mess of life during and after the Doctor.

He doesn't know how to help Martha Jones. Not now, not when there’s Ianto, who won't understand that sex and love carry more messages than 21st century Earth always understands, not now, with this all so new, and possibly not ever, with Ianto. And so when her fingers brush his, he doesn't let them linger. 

Martha smiles, and nothing more is said. But he watches her run into harm’s way far more often than he'd expected. And Jack Harkness, king of the devil-may-cares, worries for her. He's no one's mother hen, and he's certainly no one's judge, but he hugs her hard, before she goes. She kisses him. He lets her. There's memory in it.

He rings her, after that. Just every now and again. Just to hear her voice. 

He realizes, after a time, that she's checking in on him as well.

They make each other laugh.

\---

There’s a might-have-been, after Ianto.

\---

He’d known the world wasn't big enough. 

He’d known himself well enough to know he'd try to run.

He’d known before he started that he'd have to leave.

He hadn't known his feet would take him to her door. That Mickey -- Mickey Smith, of all people, but that wasn't fair, not anymore -- would answer the door, and look at his face, and say nothing at all, just wrap a hand around Jack's arm and steer him to the couch. That he'd offer a beer, and that they'll drink and say nothing, till Martha walks in the door.

She can't help him, unmoored as he is. She'd been away, she says, and he sees the rings. He's made the inference, but she doesn’t say _wedding_ and she doesn’t say _honeymoon_ and Jack is terribly, desperately grateful for that grace, sitting there in the parlor. Then Mickey, and again, Mickey of all people, because Jack doesn't have it in him to be kind or fair these days, not even in the face of unexpected generosity, offers some terrible excuse and absents himself. 

And then there’s Martha, next to him, her hand on the nape of his neck, urging him to look at her. The grief of a world, of a year, of smoke and pyres, is there in her face, and he has to close his eyes and let her bear his as well, leaning in, forehead to forehead, until he can find breath again. 

They walk, in the end. Everywhere, anywhere, streets and parks and alleyways, till they're back at her door again and his feet ache even as they tell him it's time to leave again. 

He hails a cab. She doesn't coax him to stay. 

She knows he's not staying in Wales.

She tells him to call.

\---

There are moments, later.

\---

Sometimes it’s dinner. Sometimes it’s a crisis. Sometimes, memorably, it’s an alien-related crisis breaking up an excruciatingly dull dinner meeting of officials that Jack isn’t ever really clear on actually being invited to attend. He says that later, and she reminds him that in fact, he crashed the meeting first, followed by the aliens in pursuit, and that she had been intensely grateful, if moderately concerned, at the time.

Her timeline is linear. His isn’t. She doesn’t mind. She is careful, with every new reunion.

He doesn’t know if he minds that.

Sometimes it’s a funeral. He keeps to the back, and he doesn’t intrude among the sea of day-to-day faces as she meets and greets. He thinks that the silver streak in her hair turns her regal. 

He doesn’t think she’s a day over fifty.

She’s sixty-two.

She tells him, when she finds him, as the last few people leave, that they never thought they’d live that long, in their line of work.

She tells him of their long-past near-miss with the Sontarans, of _Doctor ex machina_ , and of the gulf she hadn’t been able to span. He tells her of Alonzo, and a salute across a crowded bar, and a forgiveness he hadn’t realized he’d needed to give.

He stays longer, this time.

He calls.

\---

There isn’t a last time. Not a memorable last, known to be last and thus to be treasured. Immortality and time-travel make that highly improbable in the best of circumstances. 

He sees her again even after he’s seen her grave in winter.

He holds her hand tighter, that next time, and he doesn’t tell her that it ends in ice.

Jack’s pretty sure Martha Jones knows that anyway. Neither of them needs it said aloud.


End file.
